An Interactive Guestbook

   I have five forums and uncounted email lists. Each has its own purpose, some are community oriented, others support-specific.

   Lately some people have complained about this forum being unfriendly.. it was unfriendly to them because their actions -rudeness, attention vampire behavior or spamming, were inappropriate to the space.

  I am moved to define the purpose of this board more clearly.  This may look like a forum community but it isn't.  It is, as its title defines it, an interactive guestbook that uses forum software because guestbook software is too limited for its purpose.   

   What is its purpose?

   This site and all my others collectively get more email than any one person could handle, and it has been like that for some years, now.  Trying to keep up with it all led to workaholism, too many years of 18 hour days at this desk and typical associated physical health issues.  Martyrdom is not my gig.

   I am not complaining about success, only pointing out a rather predictable curve. As I become better known, the number of people asking for my time and attention increases, but the number of minutes in a day does not.  The net result is, an increasing number of emails got no response at all.   

   The physical necessity of limiting my computer time for the sake of my health, led to an even smaller percentage of emails getting any response, and a further refinement of my priorities.  I am not on a hero trip so it is all about, expressing my art, following my bliss. Goddess will for me. What is most blissful and fulfilling for me, personally?

   For any teacher, the "teachers pet" is usually the student who is most sincere in wanting to learn and grow. For me that is not an individual but a group: my Fire Serpent tantra students.   Their numbers are also, always on the increase. Enrollment has been increasing steadily since it opened in 2000.

  More new students enrolled in FST in the month of Jan 2007 than in the entire first year the course opened(2000).  The growth curve, is exponential and shows no sign of slowing down despite a complete lack of any advertising but search engine listings, links on my other sites and word of mouth. Despite my occasional efforts to sabotage it, to keep it small enough to handle by myself.

Exponential growth with almost zero promotion is ... unprecedented.  Goddess did it... My guidance was clear: the snowball is rolling, it has gained its own momentum and I had better learn to snowboard the avalanche if I want to avoid being overwhelmed by it.  Too much for one woman, time to start delegating.

  My solution was to completely retire from public session work and only be available for sessions with my FST students... specifically, students who have completed at least the first 20 lessons,  which takes several months. By that time, students have become established in grounding and made their own connection to Source.  They have made a start in learning to surrender to the Inner Guru... and they have certainly demonstrated sincerity!!

  Sessions with them are simply a joy.  They are familiar with my work so I do not have to repeat myself and they are very receptive so we can cover a lot, in an hour or three.  They are mature; they don't expect me to be a guru or wave my magic wand and make it all better... Enlightenment is a do-it-yourself process.

  The choice to become more exclusive freed up some time to focus on a longer term solution: training some of my FST graduates  to carry on the work.  Train them to do what I do, according to their own unique talents, and pass the public work onto them. 

  This forum was created as a guestbook for people to offer feedback on the site... it was also the most transparent and consensual way for me to delegate email responsibilities. Give my lineage a crack at handling the mail for this site. It replaced the web form for people to email me directly. 

   Instead of people responding to my email form privately and possibly getting no response at all,  you can post questions here, publically but anonymously and get a response from me or one of my Lineage.  In turn, I can easily monitor their responses and refine their training.

  My responses get archived as reference for others who may ask the same questions instead of only being seen by one person and asked again by the next... which suits me very well! 

  Why I started building websites: limited patience for repeating myself.  Most of the essays on this site are inspired by my being asked the same questions over and over! The site is like a giant Kundalini FAQ.

   I write because I like to write, but repetition bores me so I'd rather put up a webpage than keep repeating myself in private mail. Responding to questions via this forum instead of private mail, does both at once! 
   
    This forum has a purpose: several purposes and none of them are really typical of what people expect of a forum.   I am really not interested in building it as a social community.  I have other lists and forums for that.

   It is my expectation that aside from the Lineage, the membership will be rather transient, as would be expected of a guestbook.  People posting comments, feedback or questions and moving on, to book a session, join FST (it has its own forum) or whatever their path is. 

  I think people sharing stories of Kundalini experiences is valuable, it helps others to not feel so alone and isolated.

  What I did not expect, is for people who are not my lineage, and who do not in any way have experience to be giving advice, to set themselves up as self styled teachers, hanging around responding to every post to get attention and give bad advice.  I did not expect people to act out to get attention by treating my other guests rudely.  I did not expect people to have a wierd sense of entitlement, as if they had some right to post whatever they felt like, and respond to any correction or deletion with hostility. 

  It caught me by surprise.  People don't usually behave like that, on a guestbook.